The above video is one of my favorite presentations I’ve given in 2009, an opening keynote at the last San Francisco WordCamp, titled “How to Blog without Killing Yourself”. More than 700 people from 32 countries were in attendance, which made for a wonderful experience.

The original title was “Scalable Blogging Behaviors: How to Grow from 1 to 1,000,000 Readers” and the content did not change.

In the above presentation, including detailed screenshots, I cover…

- Why I blog
- How I blog and select best practices
- Frequency and tools — best times and days to post
- Blogging myths and how to harness data for better results
- Testing design and surprising findings that can be copied
- How I address comments and community building
- How I write and research for good social media response
- 20 minutes of audience Q&A on Twitter, branding, outsourcing, and much more

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed giving it.

Related and Suggested Posts:
The Top-7 Timothy Ferriss YouTube Videos (4 million views and counting)
Timothy Ferriss Experimental Short-Form Blog
Timothy Ferriss in Inc. Magazine – The Secrets of Super-Productive CEOs

It’s finally time to tell you all.

My next book will be a hacker’s guide to the human body. The working title is “From Rapid Fat Loss to Strongmen: A Guide to Becoming Superhuman.” It has actually been planned for more than two years.

I’ve recorded almost every workout I’ve done since age 15, and my house looks like an ER, with dozens of gadgets and medical devices for capturing data. I’ve had hundreds of blood tests performed and have been doing this since 1996, with costs now totalling well over $100,000. I’ve taken my weight from 145 lbs. to 225 lbs. (lean) and back down, and I can remove or add 20 lbs. in 3-4 weeks on-demand.

So, what is the result of all this OCD madness?

I can show you how I safely do things outdated physiology textbooks tell you is impossible. This isn’t because I have some unique intelligence. It’s because I’ve tested the most basic assumptions of nutrition and exercise… and I experiment with outrageous alternatives that end up working.

Cut 2% bodyfat in two weeks? No problem. Increase muscular strength 30% in 48-72 hours, or drop 50-100 pounds of fat? Not an issue. I’ve done the guinea pig shotgun approach so you don’t have to. I’ll spare you the 10,000 pages of literature on a given topic and give you the one unusual 1-2-3 method that produced unbelievable results. That is not to imply this book will not be limited to me. I’ll attempt to include replicable results on multiple subjects (of both genders and including 60+-year olds) instead of “It worked for me, therefore it will work for you” in almost all cases.

Self-experimentation galore, cutting-edge labs from the Ivy League to the Middle East, interviews with superhuman athletes, and a guru-killing examination of results with some of the brightest PhDs and MDs in the world will form the backbone of this book. It will be equally designed for men and women.

And I need your help.

I am looking for research assistants to help with this book, as well as elite athletes (national level or above), trainers of elite athletes, case studies, MDs/PhDs/researchers doing interesting work, and anyone else who thinks they have something that could fit in human performance. Normal people who’ve made incredible progress or found an unusual method that works? Let me know.

Just send me a quick note here.

The 4-Hour Workweek has been sold in 35 languages, has been on The NY Times business bestseller list for more than 2 years unbroken, and has hit #1 NY Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 BusinessWeek, among others. I expect this next book to be MUCH bigger. The names and findings of those featured will be launched worldwide.

Some of the topics I will address include: fat loss, muscular hypertrophy, and reversing injuries (acute, but especially chronic). There will be dozens more, but I have to keep them under wraps for now. I apologize, but trust me — you won’t be disappointed.

Can you help, or know someone who can? Please let me know here.

Exciting times ahead :)

This is a recent 5-minute presentation I gave at Google I/O Ignite called “The Practicality of Pessimism: Stoicism as a Productivity System.”

In it, I discuss the two most effective productivity techniques I’ve found since 2004, both borrowed from Stoicism. I include personal usage examples, as well as several from Seneca and Cato. The audio is quite low, so you’ll need to up the volume.

Ponder this: could defining your fears be more important than defining your goals?

Suggested and related posts:
Fireside Chat at Google with Timothy Ferriss
The Secrets of Super-Productive CEOs – QA with Timothy Ferriss (Inc. Magazine)
Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs
On The Shortness of Life: An Introduction to Seneca

For those who’d like to taste the various approaches to this format, here are all of the Ignite videos in one uncut sequence. There are some outstanding speakers:

I’m so excited about SU.PR, it’s hard to contain.

For the last few weeks, the brilliant team at StumbleUpon and I have collaborated on the creation of a new product designed to do one thing: get you more traffic in less time.

It might just become the hub of your social media empire…

Prior to SU.PR (pronounced “super”), I had to use ping.fm for updating Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn at the same time, bit.ly for basic analytics like click-through, scattered tools for viewing retweets, and nothing allowed me to schedule tweets well.

It was all a serious pain in the ass.

SU.PR fixes all of this and adds much more. In one place, I can now:

- Submit my content to StumbleUpon’s 7.9 million users with each post
- Have my best content showcased in a right-hand sidebar for each page I link to (here’s an example)
- Get suggestions for optimal posting times: get more traffic per post
- Schedule as many tweets or posts as I want, for any time
- See my click-throughs in real-time
- See retweets for each post, including the biggest influencers (ranking coming soon)
- Post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, with more platforms in the pipeline
- Use my own short URL (i.e. www.fourhourblog.com/ab123) instead of someone else’s branding

The result of it all? More traffic. StumbleUpon has jumped to almost 10% of my total traffic per week, delivering as many as 24,000 unique visitors to a single post in less than 24 hours. In short, SU.PR totally kicks ass. It saves me headache, gets me better results through smarter analytics, and drives significant monetizable traffic.

I’ve provided several screenshots below the text of this post to whet your appetite.

It won’t steal your Google juice either. Use one line of javascript or install a simple WordPress plugin (both available later this week) and you’re set to SEO. From George at StumbleUpon, in more technical terms:

Publishers have the option to create Su.pr URLs that will deliver visitors directly to their site via a 301 redirect, preserving their search rank. Simply upload a configuration file in the website’s root directory and it will turn on the option for all the Su.pr URLs for that domain. Unlike other web toolbars, the StumbleUpon toolbar can be hosted on your own site with a single line of Javascript. The toolbar will be shown to your visitors when they click on a Su.pr link. The toolbar promotes your best content in the sidebar and encourages your visitors to thumb-up your page and get more traffic.

Publishers can also build their brand by creating short URLs in their own domain with Su.pr. Your own custom short URLs (i.e. yourblog.com/asd) build your brand each time they are posted and retweeted. Once you enable the option, anyone who creates a short URL to your content with Su.pr will automatically generate a custom short URL. Simply add a rewrite rule and the same configuration file in your website’s root directory will do the work. We plan to have a beta version of the service available for all PHP based websites next week and more platforms to follow shortly.

Since I offered product specs to meet my wants, I’m loving SU.PR, and I’d like to offer a sneak peek to 50 readers. First come, first served: just use the code “suprtim” (I didn’t select the name!) at http://su.pr to get a free beta account, and take the next generation of social media tools for a spin.

[Update: the 50 went fast, but rumor has it that StumbleUpon might release more pre-public beta codes here]

For those of you who don’t make it in now, don’t worry. It’s worth the wait of a few weeks, and this is just the tip of the iceberg :)

The SU.PR dashboard – click here to enlarge

My most popular content promoted alongside each link – click here to enlarge

Indicating ideal posting time – click here to enlarge

Intelligent stats on each post – click here to enlarge

Scheduling posts in advance – click here to enlarge

Up to no (coherent) good once again, The Random Show returns.

In episode 3, Kevin Rose and I discuss our top 5 must-read books, how we use them, and who should read them.

The 10 books are…

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Getting Real
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

Envisioning Information
The Tipping Point
8 Weeks to Optimum Health
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
The Intelligent Investor

Others mentioned:
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
Motherless Brooklyn

If you missed them, check out Episode 1 and Episode 2. From functional MRIs and knives to angel investing and naming companies, it’s as random as the name implies.

Related Odds and Ends:
Tim Ferriss on Twitter
Kevin Rose on Twitter
Fireside Chat with Tim Ferriss at Google
Tim Ferriss presentation at TED: Smash Fear, Learn Anything